“Obviously I won’t let people starve, Senator,” Lina said, a little exasperated. “I’ve already got one crisis—I won’t start a second one trying to solve it. I just want to decrease the odds of another disaster at least until we understand what we’re dealing with. If need be, I’ll authorize limited shipping of essential goods through the lanes.”

She turned to Kronara.

“I’ll ask you to enforce the ban, Admiral. Can you coordinate with the other RDC commanders to station cruisers at the applicable hyperspace beacons? I don’t want anyone reactivating portions of the navigation network. No navigational updates will keep these lanes from being used.”

“It’ll be a larger mobilization than anything we’ve done for some time, Madame Chancellor, but certainly.”

“Thank you,” Lina said.

She took two steps forward, until she was directly before the map of the Outer Rim Territories hovering in midair.

“We all want this over as soon as possible. Besides the immediate goal of preventing further death and destruction, you know I have plans for this part of the galaxy. The Starlight Beacon station will make the Republic more than just a distant ideal making brief appearances in the Outer Rim when our starships fly through, or we attempt to collect taxes. We will be there, with them, helping, from Bunduki to Bastion.”

Chancellor Soh tapped her index finger on the map, and a single glowing starlike dot appeared, more or less in the center of the region interdicted by the ongoing hyperspace disaster.

The Starlight Beacon. Finally finished after a lengthy, challenging construction process, the huge waystation was built to serve many purposes: a Republic embassy that could also serve as a fortress if necessary; a projection of security presence to discourage raider and marauder activity. A Jedi outpost containing the largest single contingent outside the Coruscant Temple itself, where they would research and teach and listen for the guidance of the Force. Cultural spaces showcasing the beauty of the many worlds making up the sector. A communications relay that would boost transmission times in the region by a factor of ten. The most state-of-the-art medical facilities in the Outer Rim—even now, survivors of the disasters in the Hetzal and Ab Dalis systems were being treated on Starlight despite the station not being formally open just yet.

Chancellor Soh had plans for many Great Works, extending from infrastructure to culture—the Republic Fair, the ongoing construction of comm relays throughout the galaxy, cracking the code on bacta cultivation, negotiation of a new treaty between the Quarren and Mon Calamari, all sorts of innovations technological and otherwise—but the Starlight Beacon, and the other planned stations of the Beacon network…they were how she would be remembered. The greatest of the Great Works, bringing the Republic out from the Core and making it truly a galactic entity.